The irony in the teaching I'm doing is that the module is called Secure Digital Infrastructure: which is basically Linux+sysadmin skills.
...skills that have self-taught myself :P
My approach is basically #OpenSource principles mixed with learning the Linux #Terminal, with a grab-bag of theoretical stuff it isn't practical to do physically with a class of ~50 - ~90 students.
#Linux #sysadmin #LearningToDo #Teaching #AcademicChatter #AmIReallyAnAcademic? #ImposterSyndrome #HitsHard #University
@sbrl Sounds cool, please do tell us more! Do you publish your educational resources? What theoretical stuff? What are your techniques in class?
I guess that teaching “self-taught” topics is common in academia. I think of life-long learning, based on one own’s interests and motivation, sometimes obligations, with a variety of “teachers”, including books, articles, talks, videos, documentation, mailing lists, and toots 😉
I teach a course on IT Systems (no security, which is covered in someone else’s course), with a flipped classroom variant and open educational resources. Formal learning settings contributed only a small part to contents and pedagogy: https://oer.gitlab.io/oer-courses/it-systems/
Open educational resources (OER) for a course on IT Systems, from Computer Architecture based on Nand2Tetris, over Operating Systems including the Command Line Murders with Bash, to Virtualization and Containerization, Cloud Computing, Kubernetes, and Serverless Computing
@lechten Hey! Not sure whether I'm allowed to publish my resources, since I prepared them all on paid time (150hrs+ over the last 2 months >_<). I'd hafta ask my head of department.
But I can outline some of the content! Basically:
Practical (lab-based): Bash basics, user/acct mngmt, systemd, ufw, sshd, sftp, /var/log, journalctl, nginx,docker,reverse proxies
Theoretical: Physical/wireless networking,clustering/RAFT consensus+Docker Swarm+Kubernetes, VLANs, redundancy
@lechten ....the theoretical is a bit of a mess 'cause I ran outta time :P
To be clear: I have no teacher training of any description. I have been learning heavily on some wonderful experienced people around me (you know who you are), and learnt from experience of what works well and what didn't
Time saving has been a BIG feature because for reasons I have had to prepare all content from scratch week-by-week
Structure is 2xlectures + 1x2hr practical lab/week
@lechten In lectures on practical stuff I introduce the topic, then usually jump to a live demo of lab-adjacent content in relatively short order, as live demos were originally a time saving measure but have gone down *V* well with students
Live demos (LDs) in lectures are not always the lab content, eg curl, dig, ss, ip addr, journalctl, /var/log, etc were all in LDs and they support the assessment
Labs are exploration based & ask Qs to get students thinking
@lechten General philosophy/aim is influenced by:
• A need for students to be independent sysadmins by the end of the module
• #OpenSource principles
• Independent exploration & learning to allow students to gain confidence in the #Terminal, which is often not something often used/studied explicitly thus far in the degree
• Security principles threaded throughout
• Proper discussion of ethics - w/great pwr → responsibility
• See also side reply ref philosophy
@lechten Wow, I had no idea about open educational resources! That would have been SO useful to know about ~2 months ago 🤦♀️
My starting point is a limited number of research presentations & teaching some preset content @ foundation year. This module is the first time ever that I've designed a curriculum.
Never heard of a flipped classroom variant before! If you reach the bottom of this thread, how does it work?
And yeah, life-long learning FTW! o/
🧵 5/7 #Teaching #AcademicChatter #Thread
@lechten Final count:
20 x 1hr lectures (2 to go!)
10 x 2hr labs
1 x seminar from someone doing sysadminy stuff in industry <-- cancelled 'cause I couldn't find anyone
Oh yeah, and the other thing I've been trying to drive home is that you WILL do sysadmin in industry as a computer scientist/software engineer/etc, even if your job title is not 'sysadmin' - and even if you don't then knowing sysadmin is v useful to know where your software is gonna run!
🧵 6/7 #Teaching #AcademicChatter #Thread
@lechten Oops, writing an essay here. Thanks for the interest! Always happy to answer questions & get feedback 'cause I'm v new at this!
It has been far from easy, but I'm still here!
Am planning to write a proper full write-up on my experiences etc soon when I have the energy, so if anyone is interested do follow me/my blog :D
🧵 7/7 #Teaching #AcademicChatter #Sysadmin #Thread #ThreadEnd
@sbrl Wow, congrats for this fascinating course and thank you for the detailed response! Yes, please blog about this if you find the time.
I find it curious that we are usually proud of our research results and share them widely, while results of teaching efforts are often locked away. My talk “Open Educational Resources: What, why, and how?” at [1] (with recording) summarizes how I think about OER.
[1] https://lechten.gitlab.io/talks/
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@sbrl On flipped classrooms: Where I come from, lecturing is a dominant mode of teaching. It is an effective way of teaching. However, learning is pulling information out of one’s head (aka active learning), strengthening the brain and its physical structures with continued training (similarly to training in the gym for other muscles). Thus, there is little learning in lectures, at least not when I lectured (figured out painfully with bad results on classroom response quizzes that I perceived to be easy), although student evaluations where good. Students left lectures with a good feeling and struggled with the non-obvious complexities of lecture material and exercise work on their own.
🧵 2/3 #Teaching #FlippedClassroom #ActiveLearning #AcademicChatter #Thread
@sbrl In flipped classrooms, students work through lecture material on their own, and meet their lecturer for joint exercise work. Then, the lecturer is around to discuss, to provide feedback. There are lots of meta-studies on the effectiveness of different interpretations of “flipping”, with mixed results. I currently experiment with “Fail, flip, fix, and feed” of [1] (without significant changes in exam results, but with more fun in the classroom). If you are interested, my teaching statement [2] explains my approach with more references.
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2022.956416
[2] https://lechten.gitlab.io/teaching.html
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@lechten @sbrl very interesting reading, thank you for sharing. I've been "flipping" math/chemistry/physics in upper secondary school level for a couple of years now and never going back to lecturing.
My main reasoning was and still is that by moving the "lecture" part to be done at home and before class, it frees up so much of my time to actually teach the topic with experiments and exercises. That way I can also have different tiers of assignments based on student learning goals and grades.
@masi @lechten sounds v interesting! Also sounds a little bit like the labs that we have, in which students have some tasks to work through, and then we support them in the lab (giant room for with PCs) as they're doing it.
I do try to add some interactivity with discussions (ie think-pair-share) and stuff, but I do want to research this flipped classroom concept some more, as it sounds interesting!
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